Do you use Seesaw?    What do you like about it?    Is there anything else you would like to see on Seesaw?

It is really promising to see that the vast majority of parents who responded to the survey use Seesaw. We invested in Seesaw to help bridge the gap between home and school. The aim was to help you open the dialogue with your children about what they have been learning and give you an insight into their time at school. Many of the teachers here are parents and we understand the pain of asking our child what they have been doing only to receive an answer like, ‘I can’t remember’.

Parents have reported that they find the app easy to use and love to see photos of their children’s work. We researched a lot of different apps when deciding on what we would like to invest in and feel Seesaw is by far the best – I have used it as a parent myself and agree with the comments about how wonderful it is.

What else could we use Seesaw for?
Some parents have said they feel it is not being used to its full potential and in part I agree. Seesaw has a lot to offer however I am mindful that the main responsibility for teachers is to teach and although we are looking at how we can move forward with Seesaw, we want to ensure it is always seen as a positive tool and that it does not become too onerous.

Messaging the Teacher
There is the option to message the teacher but this has been switched off. The reason for this is we already use a system for messaging parents and have the year group emails, and feel having too many channels for communication could lead to messages being missed. You are always welcome to email your child’s teacher using the current methods.

Posting to the journal from home
Some parents have asked about posting to their child’s journal from home. In order to do this, class teachers need to issue a ‘home learning code’ and I am going to discuss the pros and cons of this with teachers over the coming months – watch this space!

The general consensus is that parents would like to see Seesaw used more. All teachers and support staff have now received training on the app and classes have an iPod to use specifically for Seesaw. Please remember, your child must have image consent to be included in group/class posts. 

Children in Years 3 and 4 need to be collected by an adult unless we have written permission for children to go home with older siblings. Please confirm this with teaching staff via the year group email. There are no laws about this as such as it relates to the level of the child's competency however we feel that most children in Years 3 and 4 do not have the experience to make safe choices when circumstances are not as they have expected. It is also sometimes not possible for an older sibling to keep a younger sibling safe. Ultimately it is the parents' decision however we are responsible for the safeguarding of the children so will want some dialogue if children younger than Year 5 are not being collected by an adult. As the school has become larger and access routes (both pedestrian and vehicle) have become busier, this becomes increasingly important.  There were two incidents at the end of the school day in the last week that have meant that children have not been directly supervised by an adult which may have compromised their safety and I really want to avoid a near miss becoming an accident. 

Our next parent forum will be held at 5.30pm on Wednesday 13th December and Miss Simmons would love to see some parents there especially those with children in Year 6. Please contact Miss Simmons via the Year 6 email address if you would like to come.

I wanted to thank parents of Year 3 for their support during the organisation of the Christmas Musical. Limiting tickets is not an easy decision but is unfortunately not something we have a choice on due to the restrictions with our space. We are really looking forward to seeing you next week. FOAH will be there in the evening selling refreshments too!

Please remember children can wear non uniform next Friday to help support The Stevenage Community Trust's Christmas Gift Appeal. Payments can be made now on School Gateway.

A big thank you to the parents who responded to the cinema survey on last week’s newsletter. We had almost 100 responses with the vast majority of those saying they felt overall the cinema trip was a good idea and we agree! It was amazing to see so many of you at the open afternoon yesterday enjoying the DT Christmas crafts. It made me think of the elf workshop! I hope the QR system made signing in quicker and easier for parents (and hopefully meant less time was spent waiting in the cold).

As so many of you answered my quick survey last week, I would like to ask another this week.